Fanfic / Heartless (Drich)

Started on the Space Battles forum, this fanfic crosses over Kingdom Hearts, Digimon Tamers, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and Naruto. A poster on the forum is transformed into a Shadow and is forced to survive in the various Worlds, all the while hoping to get home...

Spacebattles Fanfiction/Thread.

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The fanfic Heartless provides examples of:

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: The Darkness-corrupted sword that Drich gives to Sasuke.
• And I Must Scream: The first few moments as a Heartless were this for Drich. She had no idea what the hell was going on and, when she tried to scream, realized she had no mouth. Cue Freak Out. She got used to it later on, but the first few moments were pretty horrible.
• Badass Adorable: Drich's original form is known to be very adorable, almost doll-like.
• Beyond the Impossible: The Sage of Six Paths somehow managing to put a seal on a Dimensional Barrier. Even Jiraiya was dumbfounded.
• Black-and-White Insanity: Xine is completely incapable of comprehending that Light Is Good and Dark Is Evil aren't laws of nature.
• Cool Sword: Keyblades are this as usual, being Swiss Army Weapons modeled after the most powerful weapon in Kingdom Hearts lore. Naturally Drich makes her own as soon as possible and later acquires 5 more.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Happens a lot. When one side can't hurt the other at all, it's pretty much inevitable.
  • The fight vs Xine is particularly notable, because despite being the only opponent to be actually able to kill Drich thanks to his Keyblade, the difference in speed, power, skill and experience keeps him from landing a single hit while Drich just toys with him.
• Dark Is Not Evil
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the first few chapters, Drich was able to listen to and talk with other Spacebattles posters who were following her story. This ability was quickly dropped and never mentioned of again. The author then went back and edited that out (the original version are saved in spoilers).
• Eldritch Abomination: Drich's name is literally a shortened version of Eldritch. She is a being that is known to have no soul, body, mind, or heart, and yet is capable of reasoning, showing compassion, and intelligence. Her kind are known for devouring entire worlds, something she's shown on occasion to be capable of.
• Eldritch Location: The Corridor of Darkness, which Drich travels through constantly.
• Existential Horror: Drich, as her species name and the stories name implies, is without a Heart. Not a physical heart, but a metaphysical Heart. A Heart, is involved in a beings ambitions, emotions, memories and connections with other people, to go without it is to diminish or outright remove such abilities. But, besides metaphysically being without a Heart, Drich has full control of her faculties. When training her apprentices, they notice that they can sense their connections to everyone they know, except for Drich as she's without a Heart. They begin to become concerned, but Drich brushes it off. Drich is handling things remarkably well, but since being without a Heart and being mentally "normal" is literally metaphysically impossible, Drich's ultimate fate as an individual is uncertain and ominous.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Drich starts out like this. In the beginning of the story, she was the weakest form of Heartless, unable to protect herself from other threats. Then, as the story progressed, she became a Nigh Invulnerable badass capable of taking on the Juubi one on one.
• Genius Loci: Worlds are not only alive and sentient, but they can communicate to others through the proper medium.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: All Heartless have them, but Drich changes hers to blue to differentiate herself from other Heartless.
• Horror Hunger: Heartless in general have the all consuming feeling of hunger and the need to feed on hearts. Drich spends most of the first few chapters dealing with these urges and trying not to become corrupted by them.
  • Takato and Guilmon have destructive urges and rage the first time they become Megidramon.
• Jerkass Gods: R.O.B. or Random Omnipotent Being, who dropped Drich into the multiverse as a Heartless for little to no reason. Granted, Drich did become a vital component for saving several Worlds, as well as billions of lives but R.O.B. is still a jerk.
  • Ultimately subverted by virtue of R.O.B. being retconned out of the revised version of the story.
• Killed Off for Real: Gaara. Drich responded with Tranquil Fury, however this is mainly because Drich cannot speak beyond a monotone or show facial expressions.
• Killer Rabbit: Drich is an approachable, knowledgeable, and laidback person who genuinely wants to help the people of the worlds she wanders into. She usually isn't direct. Piss her off and remember that she's also unkillable to everything except Light, Darkness, and a Keyblade; unable to tire; able to track you by your Heart; able to travel though methods that you cannot stop; and can split herself into multiple bodies, all of which have her complete skillset and share a hivemind. Oh and Light, Darkness, and Keyblades are rare as a two-horned unicorn.
  • Remember Takato and Guilmon? Here, their normal Mega isn't Gallantmon... It's Megidramon. Though Word of God is that after the D-Reaper incidient, they can access Gallantmon as well, and even shift between the two at will. However, no one—not even them or Drich—knows about/suspects this.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Overlaps with Trauma-Induced Amnesia. Drich actually participated in the original Key Blade War and survived the destruction of the original χ-blade by absorbing one its dark shards just before it exploded. The process resulted in her memories splitting into three parts based on portions of her life, with the main Drich only remembering her time on Earth.
• Living Weapon: Keyblades are sentient and even capable of limited communication. Later in the story we actually hear them speak from time to time, though in-universe they remain unheard.
• Mama Bear: Drich pretty much treats Sasuke and Naruto as her surrogate children. So when Sasuke almost got killed by Shukaku during the Chunin Invasion she got pissed and almost killed him.
• Mugging the Monster: So many bandits do this to Drich its practically a Running Gag by this point. It's basically where she gets most of her money and entertainment.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Drich sees Nagato as this and utterly hates him for it.
  • In turn, Nagato sees Drich as this, and briefly wonders if maybe he's picked the wrong path.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Drich is this due to her Heartless nature. At one point she places herself in the middle of a star and came out of it no worse for wear.
• Odd Friendship: Drich and the Sanbi.
  • As per canon, Naruto wants to have this with the Kyubi. Both of them. He's promised.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: For a good part of the story, a lot of Drich's power ups were signified by her getting smaller. This was because she ate up some of the darkness that made up her form in order to get said power up.
• Power High: The darkness is this for Drich, forcing her to only use it in small quantities for fear of being corrupted by it.
• Really 700 Years Old: Turns out there was a much longer period of time between Drich being taken from her World and being turned into a Heartless than she thought, to the point her original human self participated in the Great Keyblade War.
• The Sacred Darkness: As per Kingdom Heart's later installments, while Darkness isn't evil it can be very dangerous.
  • As posted on the forum, Darkness and Light exist on a separate axis from "Holy/Unholy." Thus it is perfectly possible to have a Holy Darkness Spell, an Unholy Light Spell, an Unholy Darkness Spell, and a Holy Light Spell.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Drich, upon coming to Xine's World, briefly contemplates staying there for a while since she would probably have all sorts of kingdom adventures and be a part of a big nation conspiracy. But then she realize that she would have to deal with Xine and decided not to bother with it, immediately leaving the moment she dropped him and the princess off.
• Self-Insert: Drich, a poster on Space Battles, is transformed into a Heartless and dropped into the Naruto World
• Sentient Cosmic Force: Both Kingdom Hearts and the Great Darkness are sentient, though the latter is driven more by instinct.
• Supernatural Phone: Drich gives Takato, Rika, and Henry Gummiphones, which never run out of power, can connect to any local network, allow for trans dimensional communication, and allow the Worlds to communicate with them.
• Tempting Fate: In the sequel this is invoke by Terriermon when they land on a New World because he is bored.
• These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: Everything having to do with the Heartless in general, Drich views as this. She does not like even talking about them or mentioning them in conversation with people she trusts, for fear that they would make their way to one of the Worlds that Drich is fond of.
• Took a Level in Kindness: It's amazing what having still living family members, friends to care for him, and a substitute parental figure during his childhood did for Sasuke's mental state. He's now much calmer, nicer, and a lot less revenge obsessed than he was in canon.
• Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object: Sasuke's Darkness infused sword clashes with Drich's Darkness-based Keyblade Armor. Drich throws her Darkness into the armor and it holds... But is scratched. Turns out only Light or Darkness can do that to her armor.
• The Voice: There are often Bolded lines of text that act as exposition for Drich and the reader. They aren't mixed with quote marks so no discrete character is speaking, but Drich often acts upon the information. Given the level of depth and understanding... It might be Darkness itself.
  Information: Light carrying communication, bypassing barriers. She speaks, and all understand.
  Communication between Hearts. Communication between Light and Darkness.
  Drich thinking: I can do that too.
  Information: Darkness is not as capable as Light at carrying messages. Darkness strips the message of everything, leaving naught but the message itself. The communication is soundless and voiceless, but it is made known regardless.
• A Wizard Did It: Digignomes are helpful genies. Anything weird or inexplicable that happens in the Digimon universe are usually because of their bullshit Reality Warper powers.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: Noted on the forum by the author that mixing Light and Darkness is when things start getting weird.

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